Amazon interview question

What is the fast sorting algorithm and why?

Interview Answers

Anonymous

31 Jan 2011

quicksort or mergesort

Anonymous

1 Feb 2011

Also, heapsort, which requires less space than mergesort but has same average case time

Anonymous

11 Feb 2011

Its not quick or merge sort.. It is radix sort its O(n) where as both quick and merge take O(nlogn)

Anonymous

24 Feb 2011

It's kind of a trick question :| It depends on how the data is currently represented, how much space you can allocate, how many parameters are being sorted, etc. You need to know more about the data before you can give the best algorithm, there is no one-size-fits-all.